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jennystawatson wrote a great post on burnout recently. I've mostly been suffering from those symptoms too much to write in here, despite my early dreams. If you want more OTW news, renay and hl are also writing a bit from different perspectives.Board is difficult. We have three people who can hardly ever make a meeting at the moment. I would say you can see from our minutes, but I'm having trouble getting a quorum to approve the minutes so I can post them. And it's getting to be holiday season, so it's only going to get harder. We can't really have the discussions of big issues that we need if only half the board are there. So we tick along on the admin side, and work on making specific committees more sustainable.
That's an uphill battle, too. We have had an unlucky year, with six chairs having to step down in the first six months of the year - that's significantly higher than normal. We've also had a lot of experienced staffers finally hit the point of "too much". So for those who are left, training newbies is balanced with keeping things running, and trying to fit in some long-term strategic thinking in the gaps. It's easy to think that all we need to do is train and mentor more people for future leadership, but mentoring is hard work, even if it's rewarding. There are people who say they have tons of professional experience, but then don't seem to apply any of the expected skills to their org work. Which applies to me some days, too - I forget that the day-job skills for dealing with difficult clients could be applied to fannish friends in the org.
The AO3 performance problems have slipped off the headlines, but behind the scenes everyone knows it's only a temporary reprieve - we need to fix the actual problems so they don't recur. And because of the stress that's causing, still no-one wants to talk about any of the issues that were raised publicly during the last election.
I wanted to end this on a hopeful note, but I can't think of one right now. I guess that's another of the symptoms of burnout. Anyone want to volunteer for Board next year?
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Date: 2012-07-06 08:14 am (UTC)What happens often is that there are people who are trying to get these skills, and people who try to encourage and facilitate it. However often, there are others who sort of prevent that from happening under the hood. The reason I am maybe sarcastic and bitter about it is because I've been on tail end of this and seen it happen to others. It is common enough at least in some parts of the org. They say "do it, use it help us" yet when you offer a solution, try to take initiative there is an invisible wall there, in some case being treated like you don't know anything that or you are the one in the position of learning who actually doesn't have much of a clue. But no, if the hierarchy of elevating the problem doesn't worked in practice I am not sure we would have such an influx of experts who are unwilling to use their expertise.
I am behind what I said, but if you don't mind, at this point I am exhausted of verbal attacks and accusations. Feel free to contact me if you want to continue this discussion in private. You know my email.
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Date: 2012-07-06 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-06 08:25 am (UTC)